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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26774932">Taken</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/lonerofthepack/pseuds/lonerofthepack'>lonerofthepack</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Whumptober 2020 [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Collars, Held at Gunpoint, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Kidnapping, M/M, Minor Character Death, Torture, Whumptober 2020, forced to their knees, manhandled, “Pick Who Dies”</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 04:21:23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,014</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26774932</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/lonerofthepack/pseuds/lonerofthepack</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Percival Graves has been taken. "You have a choice to make, Director," Gellert Grindelwald says to him.</p><p>The first in a series of vaguely interconnected whumptober 2020 prompt fics, exploring that ye olde fandom question of 'what about Nurmengard?'<br/>No, I haven't watched the second movie, why do you ask?</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Original Percival Graves &amp; Gellert Grindelwald, Original Percival Graves/Gellert Grindelwald</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Whumptober 2020 [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1948168</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Whumptober 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Taken</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>In the Hands of the Enemy: “Pick Who Dies” | Collars | Kidnapping.<br/>My Way or the Highway: Manhandled | Forced to their knees | Held at gunpoint</p><p>This is technically two days of Whumptober, and things for Percival Graves continue to be generally suboptimal. They will....get worse. I'm not sorry.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p>He wakes to the shock of pale skin and mismatched eyes of An Enemy, and knows with horror and no small fury that this is who he's been sold to or stolen for, a warprize of a battle lingering in the shadows. And this is the top snake in a twisting den of treachery. </p><p>The walls around him are stone, whitewashed; the bed is a fine soft four-poster. His clothes—</p><p>--his clothes are soft and loose, like hospital garb but the color is pale and creamy and thin enough that it wasn't hospital garb at all but the sort of thing that would be no trouble to rip away.</p><p>His hands aren't tied anymore--or cuffed in cold iron. There's a collar around his throat. Cool on his skin; it's metal, but he can't tell what, maybe silver, maybe steel, maybe brass. It might be draining him, magically; he feels shaky and stretched too thin, but he also hasn't eaten in days, and they'd snapped his wand as soon as they'd pinned him and wrestled it out of his hand; the backlash still aches and stings. He's woozy from thirst as well— he'd been sleeping at least partially in defense against the ravages of deprivation, trying to keep what strength he could muster while the rats finished their fighting. Or he’d thought he was — they’ve moved him at least once more, and changed his clothes in the meantime without him waking, and he didn’t feel stronger.</p><p>Further reconnaissance, then. Easier to fight free if he could get the measure of his captors, and while the chaos of the process of being kidnapped would have been a bit more ideal, they'd watched him close and gotten creative in keeping him down.</p><p>He'd never anticipated Nurmengard.</p><p>"You have a choice to make, Director," Gellert Grindelwald says to him. His expression might have been solemn, but for a queer hungry look in his mismatched eyes. </p><p> </p><p>Nurmengard is cold— heavy stone and black iron, and Percival has no shoes or socks against the chill. Grindelwald, at his elbow but not quite touching, doesn't seem to have noticed. </p><p>The collar is definitely spelled; some aching version of Imperious that leaves him with plenty of choices, if licking shocks of pain were worth the price of disobedience.</p><p>Their path winds through the building--up a small flight of stairs and down another, tracking through hallways until even his normally excellent sense of direction is helplessly overwhelmed.</p><p>They arrive just as he's losing the last of his strength, knees threatening a strike until water and food are granted in return for their efforts. The hall is massive, and populated sparsely: two men Percival is well-acquainted with, their boots and their fists and their wands and their thrice-damned pricks; another handful he doesn't know but whose immediate attention to the man at his side makes their alliances, or at least their focus, clear.</p><p>His kidnappers are on their knees, wands at the bases of their skulls, looking quite a bit less comfortable with the world.</p><p>"Now, Director, it is my understanding that these men brought you some discomfort on your way here— specifically against my wishes. Tell me, which deserves more to die?"</p><p>He's already woozy-weak but he nearly falls; wobbles dangerously and jolts at hands clamp hard at his arms, catching him and manhandling him into a chair in a slick, terrifying movement that is nearly a blow all its own, and heightens the fearful unreality of this waking nightmare.</p><p>He is pushed well beyond limits that had been forged in the theater of the Great War — he has not drunk anything today, nor eaten for the better part of a week. He has slept, but only because it didn't matter if he slept: as soon as he looked too comfortable he'd wake with a boot on his throat and be tossed down over the table and shown his new place in the world, to hurt one way or another, demoted in the game of wizarding politics from a rook or a bishop to a pawn at best. His body aches from those abuses, from the bruises they left, on body and pride and his slow-shredding sanity.</p><p>He stares, hardly comprehending, at Grindelwald, and can hardly fathom making such a choice, what it could mean, what it might set off.</p><p>Perhaps he is a fool, but he yearns for his laws and structures, the weight of nearly three hundred years of guidance <em> away </em> from kangaroo courts presided over by a madman who wanted to turn wands on the no maj with a mind for empire and apparently didn't much mind turning them on a fellow wizard either.</p><p>"Perhaps a demonstration," Grindelwald said, and a man he'd known as Abernathy <em> screams</em>. And screams and screams.</p><p>"Fuck," he chokes, lurching in his chair and flinching at the grip of a hand that forces him to keep his seat, looking to Grindelwald instead of a body writhing in agony, "no--fuck, stop, you'll kill him, <em> stop.</em>"</p><p>"The other, then."</p><p>The— there's a flash of green.</p><p>"<em>No—</em>"</p><p>"No?" He flinches at a hand on his chin-- Grindelwald should have cold hands, but he doesn't, and his fingers are very strong when they move Percival's head despite the flinch. His arms aren't free, or he'd claw at that tight grip, layering pain into bruises— some manner of minion holds him, pinioned so that his elbows are in danger of brushing, his shoulders drawn involuntarily back.</p><p>Abernathy is whimpering; he can hardly think over the sound.</p><p>"The wrong man, Director, or do you imagine you're in any position to give orders here?"</p><p>"No, I— I wasn't expecting it," he says, all too aware of the trap. "I don't imagine anything at all of being here."</p><p>Grindelwald makes a sharp gesture, and another flash of green cut off the choked whimpering horribly. </p><p>There is terror bubbling in his belly.</p><p>Mismatched eyes stay chill and mad over a soft smile, his too-hot fingers still a threat on Percival's face. "I did tell them you were not to be harmed."</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Thanks very much!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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